Katie Yee has won the 2025 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, given annually to an outstanding debut book, for her novel, Maggie; or, a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar.
Yee’s novel, published in July by Summit, follows a woman whose husband tells her he is having an affair and, shortly afterwards, is diagnosed with breast cancer. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus praised the book as “a funny, stirring novel about resilience.”
Lexie Smith, B&N’s fiction campaign manager, said in a statement, “This is one of the most surprising debuts I read this year. Yee takes what could be tragic: a marriage ending, a cancer diagnosis, and turns it into something warm, funny, and deeply life-affirming. This is the book I keep pressing into people's hands when they ask me what to read next.”
In an essay for the B&N blog, Yee wrote, “In a lot of ways, this novel is about the stories we tell ourselves: the myths your mother told you when you were young or that meet-cute you won’t give up because the story is just too good. Some of these stories you’ll hold onto forever, and others you’ll need to let go of. For the writers reading this, I’m just going to say: publishing a book is a weird, wonderful, unexpected combination of both.”
The Discover Prize, which comes with a cash award of $10,000, was established in 1995. Previous winners include Abby Geni for The Lightkeepers, Tess Gunty for The Rabbit Hutch, and Essie Chambers for Swift River.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
